Monster invisibility is an interface screw

[greepish]

Nah, this is only true for corridors. If you're in a large area without corridors and you stumble on an unseen horror, it's not an interface screw, but you are screwed

[greepish]

And if you're 40 tiles from a staircase?

[greepish]

Sure, but said unseen horror would be pretty pathetic if it had no visual invisibility. I can see getting rid of pandemonium invisibles since they are a minor nuisance and nothing more, but not ghost moths or unseen horrors. I've sometimes had to deal with them in rather fun ways when there weren't any corridors. Furthermore, dealing with them is a skill, and taking it out just takes out one more interesting quality for newbies. It's hardly tedious to move to a corridor when it's quite dangerous if you lack see-invis and other monsters are around.

[hxy]

or just remove the "disturbance" indication then?

[greepish]

Well, pan invisibles would be minor nuisances even without the warning :/

[Galefury]

I strongly disagree with the OP. Permanently invisible monsters like unseen horrors and ghost moths are very interesting to me (lorocyproca much less so...). And while the position of monsters with the invis spell can often be guessed, often is not always. Especially hitting them with ranged attacks is not so easy in open areas. I think monsters turning invisible is pretty cool.

[greepish]

There is one "problem" with casters with invisibility: All of them surround themselves with enemies, making it trivial to see them. Vampire? Find the one square that isn't spammals. Ogre mage? Find the one square that isn't an ogre. orc mage? Find the one square that isn't an orc. The latter two only sometimes appear with enough of a horde, but vampires... you always know where the vamp is. I'd actually say get rid of spammals on vampires, or change it to a less spammy summon. They're supposed to be sneaky invis stalker tyes, not I KILL YOU WITH RATS!

[Roderic]

Sigmund does not approve the removal

[Grimm]

Being invisible also makes a monster harder to hit. That's a significant effect. Plus, the resistances minigame is nice and complicated; there's no reason to make it easier.

[cerebovssquire]

The OP has considered this.

On the likes of orc wizards, it could always be replaced with a monster version of Phase Shift or the like if the defensive boost is really necessary.

That makes the argument "but the EV buff" pretty useless and keeps the actually interesting tactical effect while removing the unneccesary one.

[Grimm]

Point taken.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

Why not letting some monsters use Invisibility when out of LOS?

[TwilightPhoenix]

The other thing is, unless the monster dies within your LOS, you have to manually turn on auto-pick-up. It's a minor nuisance, but it's still there.

[Danei]

Could reduce the interface screw by creating a "last known location of foo" glyph when a monster does something that reveals its presence (like shooting you with something or hitting you in melee). Could also create an "invisible monster AI" for intelligent monsters that are currently invisible (when you don't have see invis [the player can tell which monsters can see invisible, so I don't think it would be a problem if the monsters can tell when the player can see invisible]) which would make them step in a random direction every now and then to throw you off.

Of course, the latter thing would actually create an incentive for players to remove their SInv+ if they're capable of firestorm carpet bombing an area while a monster potentially wastes a turn or two stepping around randomly, so maybe it's not a good idea.

[dpeg]

4.1 had invisible, intelligent monsters (e.g. uniques like Sigmund) move -- i.e. spent an action to move elsewhere. This is nasty but solves the issue.

[theclam]

I really like unseen horrors as they are. I think making monsters actively move while invisible may be too strong, at least on Sigmund. I think the better solution is to have invisibility occur more often on monsters that don't appear in large packs.